


While Away the Hours

by miniconsuffrage



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Multi, stuck inside
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:41:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25134058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miniconsuffrage/pseuds/miniconsuffrage
Summary: A mission goes very, very wrong, for reasons that are absolutely not Skywarp's fault. He's hurt, the sky is full of corrosive gas, and he and his trine are stuck in a cave until it dissipates. For four entire cycles.Skywarp is going to die of boredom if Starscream doesn't kill him first.
Relationships: Skywarp & Starscream & Thundercracker (Transformers)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 53





	While Away the Hours

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for [Red Rust Digest](https://leviathanzines.tumblr.com/post/614208691635404800/redrustdigest), a charity zine! You should go check it out!!

The mission hadn't gone according to plan.

The payload was meant to function like a huge smoke bomb. There would be an airstrike on the Autobot stronghold, and in the midst of the chaos, the payload would be dropped, at which point the Decepticon air force would pull back and the payload would hit the ground, immediately flooding the place with a corrosive gas. It wouldn't kill, but it would target joints, causing them to seize up, and would eat at the circuitry beneath. Once the Autobots were incapacitated, the air force would swoop back in, followed closely by ground troops, and they would take the whole place handily.

Unfortunately, the idiot carrying the payload had been shot by anti-aircraft guns. The payload had exploded, meaning the entire sky was filled with corrosive gas as it slowly, slowly drifted to the ground. And Skywarp, idiot in question, was very quickly falling out of the sky.

Thrusters weren't working. Warp drive only popped him a couple meters away and then gave out. T-cog _did_ work, and upon his successful transformation Skywarp felt a moment of triumph before he hit the ground _hard._

It wasn't the worst crash he'd ever had. It hurt like the inferno, but that was just kind of life. What was bad was that he was in the perfect position to watch the cloud of corrosive gas sink slowly towards him.

This one was a Starscream original. He'd done a lot of pestering to get control of the whole thing—command of the mission, the strategy, and the use of his own invention. He was going to be seriously upset at Skywarp for screwing everything up, but at that exact moment, Skywarp wasn't too worried. He'd probably had a few important things knocked loose in his brain module. Instead of worrying, he just lay there, staring up at the cloud, watching as the rest of the air force scrambled to get up and away from the cloud.

...All except for one, anyway. One of them flew right through it. Straight towards Skywarp.

Thundercracker transformed and landed in a crouch next to Skywarp. "Are you okay?" he asked, worry clouding his voice.

"Great," Skywarp said, and he felt it, too. The pain had switched over to an interesting tingling sensation, and honestly, he didn't hate it.

"Can you move?" Thundercracker prodded, getting onto his knees and pulling Skywarp's arm out of the slight indent it had made on the ground. 

Skywarp clenched and unclenched his fist, then wiggled his feet back and forth. "Yeah, kinda," he said. "I don't think I can get up, though. You can just leave me here. Starscream said the stuff wouldn't kill people, just stop them from moving."

"I don't trust that," Thundercracker said bluntly. He started to pry Skywarp off the ground, heaving him up onto his shoulder and standing up straight. It didn't feel _great_ , and Thundercracker swayed a little under his weight, but he stayed upright. 

Before they could go anywhere, a third figure approached, this time parallel to the ground. Skywarp only saw the familiar flash of red before Thundercracker turned around to look himself, thus obscuring Skywarp's view.

Skywarp heard rather than saw Starscream transform and land on his feet. "You two," he hissed, "are the _stupidest_ _people on the planet._ "

"Don't let him kill me," Skywarp instructed. He started to squirm, hoping to direct Thundercracker in the direction of anywhere Starscream wasn't, but all he managed to do was get Thundercracker to drop him.

"Warp!" Thundercracker gasped, dropping back to his knees to pull Skywarp into a sitting position. "Sorry!"

"It's okay. I can't really feel anything anyway," Skywarp said, half shrugging. That didn't make Thundercracker feel any better, judging by the look on his face.

Starscream huffed. "Enough! If either of you stay here any longer you're going to get stuck here," he said. "We have to leave. Now."

"Leave to where? I can't fly," Skywarp pointed out. He got a sneer in response, and then Starscream bent over, grabbed Skywarp's foot, and started to drag him across the ground. Thundercracker rushed around to grab him under the arms and lift him up so that he wasn't scraping up his back and wings. Good old Thundercracker.

They ran, as fast as was possible while carrying Skywarp as dead weight between them, towards the Autobot headquarters. All the guns which had previously been shooting up into the sky were now silent. The stronghold was on an incline, and below it there were indentations, made from the warping of metal over time, empty space below and acid rain above wearing away at it. One of them was big enough to practically be a cavern underneath the stronghold, and it was there Starscream led them.

He dropped Skywarp as soon as they were inside. And it wasn't a moment too soon—just as the three of them made it inside, the first of the layer of gas touched the ground.

"That was a close one," Skywarp said, sitting upright only because Thundercracker still had hold of him under his arms. He had almost zero control of his body, currently. "Thanks, Star."

This was, evidently, the wrong thing to say—Starscream whirled on him. 

"Thanks?!" he screeched. _"Thanks?!_ You ruined my whole plan and all you have to say is _thanks?"_

"Uh... Sorry?" Skywarp asked. He tried moving his feet, but they barely even twitched. "It's not like I got shot on purpose." Yeah, he _could_ have warped away, but he'd been focused on avoiding the dogfight happening next to him and hadn't noticed the shot coming.

"No, _of course_ not," Starscream seethed. "You just _happened_ to think the plan was stupid, and then everything went wrong by _chance._."

That didn't seem very fair, Skywarp thought. "First off, it was stupid, because you could have just made something that killed them in the first place rather than freezing them so we could kill them later," he said. "Second, I said it was stupid and you still put me in charge of carrying the thing, which is also kind of stupid."

"It doesn't _freeze_ them, it _immobilizes—"_

 _"Third,_ I wouldn't get myself shot on purpose just because I think your plan is dumb, that's just—"

"Guys?" Thundercracker interrupted. He'd dragged Skywarp over to the wall of the cavern so he could lean back against it, and was now standing, but he was still bent over a little. "I don't feel right."

Starscream turned and huffed at him, arms folded over his chest. "Yes, that would be because you flew _right through_ the cloud of corrosive gas," he said. 

"Skywarp was hurt," Thundercracker protested weakly. Skywarp watched as he tried to straighten up and failed. Starting to panic a little, he crouched down, which he barely accomplished before his knees locked up and he fell backwards against the cavern wall to Skywarp's right.

"Well, he's still hurt, and now so are you," Starscream said, and started rummaging through his subspace. "Idiots. Both of you. I'm surrounded by incompetence."

He pulled out a canister, which he shook vigorously, then pointed the nozzle at Thundercracker and started to spray.

"What's that? I can't see," Skywarp protested. He was trying to get his head to turn so he could get a better look, but it wasn't listening to him. Weird. 

"I wouldn't be a very good scientist if I didn't create antidotes to my inventions," Starscream said. "I knew _someone_ would need it. I just assumed it wouldn't be the two of you."

Thundercracker accepted the spraying of his joints quietly, with a soft "thanks" when Starscream was done as he slowly worked his limbs back to functionality. Starscream walked over and stood in front of Skywarp, staring him down with his hands on his hips.

"I should just leave you like this," he said. "As a lesson."

"Aw. But then I wouldn't get to shoot any Autobots," Skywarp frowned.

"Which is exactly what you deserve," Starscream said. "But luckily for you, it doesn't help the cause."

Skywarp kept his expression solemn as Starscream crouched down and started to spray him with the stuff in the canister, even though he wanted to laugh. As if _Starscream_ had any right to tell anyone else to govern their actions based on what helped The Cause _._ Still, he did feel grateful once he started to feel able to move his limbs again.

"That's only a temporary fix. You'll have to wash the solution off once we get back to base, but it'll work long enough to finish the mission," Starscream said, walking back over to the mouth of the cavern.

"Wait, what? I thought the mission was ruined," Skywarp said. "Those were the words you used, I'm pretty sure."

Starscream stomped his foot, but didn't turn to look at him. "The gas becomes neutralized once it hits the ground. It'll just take about four cycles for all of it to go away. The Autobots will still be immobilized, and as soon as it's safe, we can go out and kill them."

"...So basically, nothing is ruined at all, and you just wanted an excuse to yell at me," Skywarp concluded.

"It _is,_ because being stuck down here with you two was _not_ part of the plan," Starscream huffed. "But I suppose we'll have to make the best of it."

Skywarp made to stand, the first time he'd done such a thing since being blown out of the sky, and to be honest, he'd kind of forgotten about all the damage he'd taken from that. Standing up reminded him, in the form of a lot of pain, and the puddle of energon he'd left on the floor of the cavern. 

"Sit down," Thundercracker hissed, grabbing him and pulling him back to his original spot. "Here, I've got a field repair kit, just hold on..."

Skywarp held on, very patiently in his opinion, as Thundercracker turned him all over looking for energon leaks and pressed bandages to them. When he was done Skywarp felt more bandage than machine, but he'd mostly stopped leaking. As Thundercracker worked, Starscream tried to comm the rest of the army, growling and cursing when nothing would connect.

"The Autobot stronghold being right on top of us is interrupting my comms," he seethed, glaring at Skywarp like he was thinking of using some of his limbs as a signal booster. If that were a thing that were possible to do, Starscream would be the person to figure out how to make it happen. "This is all your fault."

"Yeah, okay. What do we do now?" Skywarp asked. He was feeling much better now that the remaining energon in his body was staying there, but the damage from the crash was starting to catch up with him. 

"We wait," Starscream said, and started to pace. "For four cycles."

Those four cycles felt like four million. Skywarp wasn't a patient being on a good day, but this? With himself falling apart, Thundercracker quietly fretting beside him, and Starscream pacing the length of the cavern, back and forth, back and forth? No. Skywarp was going to lose it.

"We should play a game," he said.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea," said Thundercracker, who was much better at reading a room than Skywarp was. Skywarp had never let that stop him before.

"No, really. If I have to sit here doing nothing for another second I'm going to die," Skywarp said. "Come on! Truth or dare."

"I dare you to warp us out of here," Starscream said.

Skywarp may have pouted a little bit. "I'm injured. That's cheating," he said. "Only things that are actually possible."

"I dare you to walk back out into that cloud."

"Starscream doesn't have to play if he doesn't want to," Thundercracker said. He turned to sit so that he was facing Skywarp. "I'll play with you, Warp."

"Great," Skywarp grinned. "Truth or dare?"

"Truth," Thundercracker said. Clearly he didn't trust Skywarp's talent for coming up with good dares. Which was sad, and meant Skywarp was going to have to actually think. 

"Okay... Do you actually like me, or do you just put up with me because we're stuck together now like Starscream says?" Skywarp asked. Starscream scoffed in the background.

Thundercracker frowned. "I actually like both of you most of the time, and Starscream shouldn't say things like that," he said. Nice and straightforward. "Truth or dare?"

"Dare."

"I dare you to sing that one Rosanna song you don't like," Thundercracker said, the corner of his mouth turning up just the slightest bit.

"You wound me, TC," Skywarp sighed. There was only one Rosanna song he didn't like—everything else she'd ever done was musical genius. "Only the chorus."

"Fine," Thundercracker relented, and Skywarp did it. By the end of it he was almost starting to enjoy it, too, if only because of the expression of disgust and disdain Starscream was making at him. 

"Okay, truth or dare," Skywarp prodded.

"Truth."

"If you had the chance to be trine leader and Starscream wasn't allowed to kill you for it, would you?"

"Absolutely not. Truth or dare?"

"Dare."

Thundercracker sighed. "It's hard to do these considering you're about to fall apart," he said. "I dare you to empty your subspace."

Skywarp reached in and started grabbing things, making a pile on the ground between them. There was a lot. Field rations, a couple stray rust sticks, a handheld communicator, a couple magazines from a gun he'd lost ages ago, dataslugs so old he didn't know what was on them, a stray stylus with no accompanying datapad, electrical tape, a small tube of emergency polish, a couple dirty rags, a piece of a pipe he'd found, one half of a pair of broken stasis cuffs, and a sadly empty flask.

Thundercracker just stared at him as the pile grew. Starscream, too, finally came to sit down with them so he could watch each new reveal.

"Is that my polish?" he demanded, reaching for it.

"Nope!" Skywarp swiped it before he could touch it, and quickly replaced the tube back in his subspace.

"You walk around with this all the time?" Thundercracker asked. Skywarp couldn't tell if that tone was awe or concern. Both?

"I guess so. Honestly I forgot most of that stuff was in there," Skywarp shrugged. "Okay, your turn, Starscream."

Starscream seemed to forget he'd decided not to play, which was exactly what Skywarp was going for. "Okay, Skywarp," he said. "Truth or dare?"

"Truth," Skywarp decided on. Thundercracker, he knew, wouldn't ask him to do anything dangerous, but Starscream probably would.

"Are you really as stupid as you seem, or is this all just an elaborate ruse?"

"Starscream," Thundercracker frowned.

"It's a fair question," Starscream huffed.

"No it isn't."

"I don't think I'm stupid, but I'm also not hiding anything," Skywarp said, wanting to get on with it. "Truth or dare, Screamer?"

Starscream narrowed his eyes at him. "Truth," he said slowly, as if he wasn't sure it was the right choice.

"Are you seriously delusional enough to think you can overthrow Megatron, or is trying just a hobby at this point?" Skywarp asked, smiling innocently.

Starscream launched himself at Skywarp and tackled him to the floor. Skywarp thought he put up a good fight, considering how damaged he was, in the few seconds before Thundercracker dragged Starscream off him and deposited him on the other side of the cavern.

"No more games," Thundercracker said firmly.

So that was the first cycle.

Into the second, Skywarp was sure he was losing his mind. He kept looking out at the mouth of the cavern, hoping the gas was gone, hoping his chronometer was just broken along with the rest of him, but no such luck. It kept coming down, impossibly slowly. Skywarp wasn't sure he wanted to be part of any of Starscream's plans in the future.

He grabbed the pipe from his pile of things he hadn't bothered to put back into his subspace and started scratching patterns into the ground. He drew little stick figures, then, in a stroke of genius, started to decorate them with the energon that had puddled on the ground before he'd gotten crudely patched up. He was in the middle of giving them wings when Thundercracker noticed what he was doing and pulled his hand away.

"Don't do that," he said, frowning at him.

"I'm going to die, Thundercracker," Skywarp said. "I'm _so_ bored. This is the end of the line for me."

Thundercracker actually rolled his eyes at him, which meant he wasn't super worried about him anymore. Which was sort of a good thing, Skywarp guessed. He pulled a working datapad out of his subspace, and Skywarp couldn't _believe_ he hadn't brought that out sooner. "Here, I'll read to you if you stop drawing with your own energon," Thundercracker said.

"I don't know, that sounds like a lot to ask..." Skywarp said, but nonetheless he shifted to lean against Thundercracker and settled in to listen. He grabbed one of the magazines from the pile and started slipping the bullets in and out of it, just to give his hands something to do.

Thundercracker read aloud for the next two cycles. The two of them had very different preferences when it came to fiction. For one thing, Skywarp preferred to watch his, but he didn't hate being read to. He liked stuff with action, though. Space adventures and big fights and space battles and stuff like that. Thundercracker liked more mushy stuff, with romance and people's daily lives, and things that made you _think_ . At least, that was what he claimed. There was this whole genre of historical fiction with all these complicated, outdated relationship dynamics that Skywarp was pretty sure could never have been true, but Thundercracker just ate it up. All this weird stuff about trines, and fliers versus grounders, and _propriety,_ and all these rules about conjunxes and amicas.... 

Suffice to say it wasn't Skywarp's preference. But right now, it was _something_ , so Skywarp hung onto every word.

At one point he rolled off Thundercracker and lay face down on the ground, optics off, just listening. When he looked around again, Starscream had stopped pacing once again, and was sitting and listening, too. Many times, he looked like he was going to interrupt, but then kept his mouth shut. Skywarp was really impressed.

Then, Thundercracker came to the end of a chapter in which the main character rejected the character she was _clearly_ supposed to finish her trine with, except for the fact that the one who'd already agreed to trine with her really wanted to be amicas instead, and the one she rejected was so distraught he decided to join the Great War where he knew he'd probably perish, and because he was so upset he decided to leave all his shanix to his guardian who had secretly arranged for the deaths of all his previous love interests without him knowing, and it was all just too much.

"This is ridiculous! I can't believe people read this," Starscream asserted. "He can't just _leave!_ Has he never heard of perseverance?"

"He was respecting her wishes," Thundercracker defended.

"By going to get himself killed? That's dumb," Skywarp said.

"Well, yes, he's upset," Thundercracker said. "He's not in his right mind right now."

"If this is how he's going to behave, she's right to reject him. What sort of match would that be, if he's losing his head every time someone hurts his feelings?" Starscream asked, shaking his head. "Ridiculous. Keep going."

"I can't," Thundercracker said. "That's all there is right now."

The cavern was deathly silent for a moment.

_"What?"_

"Thundercracker! You can't just leave us hanging like that!"

"The author hasn't finished it yet," Thundercracker said, scooting out of the way of Skywarp's flailing, despairing limbs. 

"What sort of imbecile publishes half a story?" Starscream demanded. He stood up, walked over, and snatched the datapad out of Thundercracker's hands to scrutinize it, as if he would see something Thundercracker had missed.

"They're just posting each chapter as they finish writing it," Thundercracker said. "Lots of people are doing it that way now. If I'd known we were going to get stuck, I would have downloaded something else to read."

Starscream held out the datapad and dropped it. Thundercracker just barely caught it before it fell to the ground and shattered. 

"Of all the people I could be stuck with. It _had_ to be you two," Starscream sneered. 

"It's nice to spend time with you, too, Starscream," Thundercracker said, rolling his eyes as he leaned back against the wall again.

Half a cycle.

Just half a cycle left. 

"I'm not going to make it," Skywarp announced to the cavern at large. "Come here so I can give you guys my last words."

"Are you actually in pain, or are you being dramatic?" Thundercracker asked.

"I'm in so much pain. I'm literally dying from boredom," Skywarp said. He grabbed Thundercracker's arm and tugged him closer, then reached out for Starscream and made grabby hands at him. "Come here. I gotta do my last will and stuff."

"Everything you own is in that pile over there," Starscream sneered. "All I want from _you_ is my polish back."

"No, I'm taking that with me," Skywarp said. "I want you to have my dataslugs, Starscream. There's probably some really cool stuff on there I forgot about. Like some secret codes or something that I could never figure out. But I know you can. You're smart."

"They're probably bootlegged gladiator fights," Starscream said. "As I said, I don't want them."

"Thundercracker, to you I'm leaving my stylus. It needs a good home," Skywarp continued. "I want you to use it to write your own dramatic stories. I think you'd be really good at it."

Thundercracker smiled down at him, which Skywarp counted as a win. "I don't know about that... I've never written anything in my life."

"Yeah, but you read stuff all the time. How hard could it be?" Skywarp asked. "Your first story can be about a broken trine who lose one of their members in a heroic but gruesome death scene. The other two don't realize that the one who died was what was keeping them together until after he's gone."

Across the cavern, Starscream snorted.

"Right. I'll get right on that," Thundercracker said, but he started to gently rub Skywarp's helm, which was a nice distraction from the actual real-life pain he was experiencing from his injuries.

"Okay but for real, if I did die would you guys replace me?" Skywarp asked. "I don't know how you'd ever find someone who could live up to me, but would you try?"

"Yes, where could we possibly find another idiot?" Starscream mused.

"I think if Starscream died we could find a replacement pretty easily," Skywarp said, just to hear his indignant screech. "I mean, we wouldn't be able to find anyone _like_ you, Starscream. Nobody's like you. But we could probably find someone who would like us enough to trine with us."

"If you aren't careful you really will be dying soon," Starscream said.

"If Thundercracker died... I don't know," Skywarp continued, unperturbed. "I would be really sad. And it would basically be impossible to find someone else who'd be willing to put up with Starscream, so it might just be me and him. For the rest of eternity."

"No one is going to die," Thundercracker said firmly. "You're fine. And as soon as the gas goes away, you're going to a medic."

"But that's never going to happen! We've been here for years," Skywarp complained.

At that exact moment, Starscream got to his feet and ran to the mouth of the cavern. "Look!" he exclaimed, and Skywarp and Thundercracker did. There, before their very eyes, the last of the gas could plainly be seen. The layer ever so slowly drifted to the ground and dissolved into nothingness, leaving the air clear. Starscream was clearly ecstatic. "And exactly when I predicted, too! Now we can finally finish crushing the Autobots!"

He darted out of the cavern, and Skywarp and Thundercracker could hear him shouting over his comms to their fellow soldiers before he transformed and shot into the sky.

"I can't _believe_ I'm not even going to get to shoot a single Autobot," Skywarp complained. "Hey, Thundercracker, what if you carried me to the base? They won't be able to fight back, so it won't be dangerous or anything."

"Absolutely not," Thundercracker said, leaning Skywarp down and getting to his feet. "I'm going to get a medic. I'll be right back. Don't try to go anywhere, okay?"

"But—"

"Stay there," Thundercracker ordered, more forcefully this time, and jogged out of the cavern, only to disappear moments later.

Which left Skywarp alone. 

With nothing to do.

Bored, and all by his lonesome. By himself. With nothing and no one to entertain him.

"Well, I guess I'll die now," he announced to nobody.

(Ultimately, he did survive. But it was a near thing.)

**Author's Note:**

> Share on [tumblr](https://miniconsuffrage.tumblr.com/post/623016210676826112/chapters-11-fandom-transformers-all-media) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/miniconsuffrage/status/1280602966425206787?s=20)!


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